Dancing Through Sunday
by Nestrik
Summary: An AU one shot. Cho and Harry confront each other after Cedric's death. Named for the genius AFI song.


A/N: An A/U type thing where Cho and Harry confront each other after Cedric dies. Don't bother flaming me about how this didn't really happen, or couldn't have really happened anyway. I know that. It's A/U.  
  
Disclaimer: Everyone belongs to J.K. Rowling. The song belongs to AFI.  
  
Dancing Through Sunday  
  
By Nestrik  
  
=  
  
Will you join me in this dance of misery  
  
Cradled in impossibility  
  
Swooning  
  
I am swept away  
  
Swept off my feet  
  
=  
  
It was a dark and stormy night. The fire was burning brightly in the common room, and a solitary figure sat on one of the wooden chairs in front of the fire. How many times she had swept her gaze around this room and her gaze had swept over the wooden chairs, the wooden backed couch, the desks and tables scattered throughout the room. The remnants of an Exploding Snap deck lay scattered over a table in the far corner, wisps of smoke still curling up from the ace of spades. An abandoned chessboard was swept to one side, the bishop still waving its hands for being abandoned in a position that assured checkmate for its controller.  
  
Hufflepuff- Hufflepuff. Her arms gripped the wooden arms of the chair. The fire waved tendrils at her. Beckoning.  
  
None of the Houses knew the pain as Hufflepuff did. She would go to comfort them, but she didn't know where it was located. Obviously in Hogwarts, maybe, she thought hysterically. Feel no remorse. It wasn't your fault.. Harry Potter.  
  
Get a grip, she told herself. She closed her eyes and let the air circulate through her bloodstream. It wasn't Harry's fault, she knew that, but someone needed to be blamed.  
  
Voldemort. But he didn't have a face, he didn't have a tangible face. She buried her head in her hands, weeping silent tears. Every now and then a sob would escape between her clasped fingers. She didn't want to wake anyone, but no one was sleeping. Everyone was talking about Cedric. Her Cedric.  
  
=  
  
With step by step we take the lead as  
  
Drop by drop we start to bleed  
  
And we dance in misery  
  
=  
  
Cho Chang almost wanted someone to come downstairs and comfort her, just so that she could tell them off and see the stunned look on their face because no one, no one at all, expected to see Cho Chang broken. She was supposed to be perfect. This night was supposed to be perfect. June the twenty fourth was the day that Cedric Diggory was supposed to go into the maze, come out with the Triwizard Cup, and scoop her up into his arms in a passionate kiss. But Cedric had come out dead, a corpse that she hadn't even been able to kiss goodbye. Only Harry. It was torture going through every minute knowing that Cedric was dead. Cho didn't doubt that she had feelings for him. But Harry still hung in the back of her mind. Why? Why was he there where he wasn't supposed to be? He had asked her to the ball.. Wangoballwitme?  
  
Cho smiled through her tears, and then recoiled in shock. She had smiled. On the day after Cedric's death. Night after his death. Whatever.  
  
Cho sighed and lifted herself off the chair. She opened the door that gave her access to the rest of Hogwarts.  
  
=  
  
All lost in the arms of our misery  
  
Swept off our feet by our misery  
  
We're swept into shadows  
  
Will you lend yourself to a beauty that will horrify  
  
Let me hide within your black  
  
The still inside your eyes  
  
Deafened  
  
Caught within a cry so sensual  
  
=  
  
The halls were deserted in the night, and Cho found that she felt freer than she had in weeks. Always surrounded by someone. her friends, even Cedric, had made her feel surrounded. Trapped, even.  
  
The candles cast a soft, golden glow on the stone walls. The suits of armor reflected the flames, giving Cho a sense of seclusion and peace.  
  
"Cho?" a soft voice asked. She closed her eyes, holding back the angry tirade she had been about to loose upon the intruder, and then stopped.  
  
She had been so preoccupied; she hadn't noticed where she had wandered. A long hallway stretched before her, the walls covered in paintings. Paintings of food. One of the paintings was propped open, and those green eyes were unmistakable.  
  
"Harry. I." Cho backed up a few steps, her hand on her mouth in shock. "I. Sorry?"  
  
Harry shut the door behind him, barely missing the edge of a tea cozy topped by two large brown eyes that had been peering out of the crack between the painting and the wall. "S'okay. Why. er. why are you apologizing?"  
  
"Well. Cedric. You were there. Volde- You-Know-Who, I mean."  
  
Harry looked down at the floor. "Yeah. er. I should be saying sorry. to you because you were. erm. involved?"  
  
"Yeah, well. I was taking a walk."  
  
Harry nodded, boring into her very soul with those bright green eyes. "Yeah. I was in the kitchens."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Saying bye to Dobby."  
  
"Dobby?"  
  
Harry grinned, then looked away in shame. "House elf," he said gruffly. "Known him since my second year."  
  
"I see." Cho nodded.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Well." Harry said slowly.  
  
"Goodnight, then."  
  
Harry nodded, a flush seeping over his cheeks. He turned on his heel and walked down the corridor towards the Great Hall, where the Goblet of Fire had once stood, where Cedric had once put his name.  
  
"Harry!"  
  
She stepped towards him, her hand reaching out towards his face, his eyes, his mussed black hair that was retreating from her. Cedric had gone into the maze, away from her, and he had never come back. She did not want the same to happen to Harry. Not to Harry.  
  
He turned around, and beneath his green irises Cho could read both concern and guilt.  
  
"Wait," Cho said weakly.  
  
She stepped forwards again, lowering her arm as she went. "Don't go."  
  
Harry shuffled his feet and looked down at his shoes. "It's late," he muttered.  
  
"Please, Harry. I need you now."  
  
He looked at her, his eyebrows drawn together in a crease over his nose.  
  
"I'll get in trouble," he whispered, but they both knew that he didn't care about trouble, not when they were so close.  
  
"Harry," Cho said, her voice choked up with tears.  
  
His eyes grew wide. "Please. don't cry, Cho."  
  
She shook her head, defeated and angry, wiping away her tears angrily on the back of her wrist.  
  
Harry paused, then reached out a hand and put two fingers gently under her chin. He lifted her eyes up to meet his own, wide and terrified and loving.  
  
"Harry," she said again, quietly.  
  
He smiled, just a little smile, and brushed her tears across her cheek in a hot and salty trail.  
  
"Cho."  
  
=  
  
As step by step I separate  
  
While breath by breath I suffocate  
  
So who will follow  
  
Who is the lead  
  
=  
  
She touched his arm, lightly, and then started to grip his sleeve. She was hurt, she knew it, because she was dizzy and the floor was tilting up underneath her feet and she was falling-  
  
-Into his arms. She could smell the scent of him, beneath his wooly sweater.  
  
Harry buried his face into her shoulder, then into her hair. His fist curled into the smooth black strands above her ear.  
  
"Cho. I."  
  
"Shh," she whispered, still pressed against his beating heart.  
  
They stood there like that for a long time before Harry's soft but firm grip on her hair relaxed. Cho drew herself away from him slowly, letting her hands drag across his chest.  
  
"I would have gone to the ball with you," she said quietly, looking up from her hands on his chest to meet his eyes.  
  
He smiled. "I know you would have."  
  
She smiled back, and then she suddenly lifted herself up onto the points of her toes and their mouths met in all the shock and horror of the past days. Harry's warmth mingled with the salty taste of her tears and the newer, briny and brackish taste of blood that had arisen in her mouth. Cho sobbed, tilted her head back, let his lips trail across her throat and across her jawbone as she wept.  
  
"Cho." His voice was husky.  
  
"Don't stop." She lowered her head back down and kissed his forehead.  
  
"Just don't stop."  
  
=  
  
I know I'll leave a stain because I bleed as we dance  
  
We all dance  
  
We all have no chance in this horrid romance  
  
=  
  
AFI Dancing Through Sunday 


End file.
